Bedford's Berlusconi

It sounds like the plot of a bad airport novel. Local newspaper owner and scourge of the borough council decides to take on the politicians at their own game. Having led a successful campaign to give residents the chance to elect their own mayor, he duly stands for office - and is elected by a landslide.

Frank Branston's critics have nicknamed him the Berlusconi of Bedford. For Italian prime minister, read the newly-elected mayor of the Bedfordshire county town. Compared to Silvio Berlusconi's media interests, Branston's empire is rather more modest, the 10-strong Local Sunday Newspapers group led by its flagship free title, Bedfordshire on Sunday, whose distribution is around 100,000 out of a total group distribution of 400,000.

Unlike Berlusconi, Branston did the decent thing and resigned as chairman of the newspaper group, and has forfeited all voting rights in the company while he remains mayor (his wife is now the majority shareholder).

To further avoid accusations of a conflict of interest (and the inevitable "Branston's Pickle" headlines), he wrote an open letter to Bedfordshire on Sunday's editor, asking to be treated like any other politician.

But some people weren't satisfied. Critics said the 63-year-old Branston had twice as many mentions in the paper before the election as his opponents. "They omitted to say that often it was in stories attacking me," says Branston. "Although we have a lot of Italians in Bedford, I think the Berlusconi comparison would probably have passed the bulk of the population by."

It's a big year for Branston. Apart from his election, it is also the 25th birthday of the Bedfordshire on Sunday title, which he launched in March 1977. Before that he worked as a freelancer, had been on Fleet Street and had a stint as a journalist in the Middle East.

In publishing that rarest of things, a free local paper distributed on a Sunday, Branston eschewed the regional staple of community news in favour of hard news exclusives and investigations.

"We specialised in local politics, police and crime, and got ourselves a reputation," he explains.

"Our philosophy was the same as the Sunday nationals - we wouldn't run a story if it appeared elsewhere. We didn't do community news because there were four papers during the week serving that market. We aimed for good quality journalism, hard-hitting stories with a bit of spice."

But on a shoestring launch budget, the production values weren't initially what they could have been. "It wasn't brilliantly laid out, and it had the worst pictures of any paper in the country," says Branston. "It's like that line from Morecambe and Wise when Eric is trying to play the piano. They were the right words, they just weren't always in the right order.

"But it was always worth reading. There's no reason why free papers have to be bad journalism. It's not a matter of how you distribute your paper or how you make money, it's what you think a newspaper is about.

"If a paper's launched by advertising people then everything will be subordinate to ad revenue. If it's launched by a marketing man then he'll have strong views about what it should look like. But if it's launched by a journalist it will either produce good journalism - or go bust.

"I look at free papers elsewhere in the country and I think, 'My God, that's crap.' But not always."

The paper's hard news agenda remains today. Last year it revealed how bodies were being kept in a chapel of rest at Bedford general hospital. Pictures of the bodies, which hospital staff claimed had been tampered with - something strenuously denied by the paper - made national front-page news.

"It's about uncovering the real stories, as opposed to the ones that people want to tell you," declares current editor, Steve Lowe. "It also helps we're delivered on a Sunday, when people have more time to read the paper. If a paper's delivered during the week, people tend to treat it like junk mail."

Branston's move into politics is even more extraordinary given a libel case brought against Bedfordshire on Sunday by three senior council officers.

It followed a story two years ago which told how postal votes were mislaid during an election, and the paper was critical of the council's efforts to remedy the situation. The paper won the case, with one exception, leaving the council with a £450,000 bill for costs. The case is now the subject of two appeals, and will return to the high court in February.

"There was an awful lot of friction and bad blood," remembers Branston. But surely that must make it difficult working with council chief executive Shaun Field? "We get along pretty well," deadpans Branston. "We don't discuss the case."

But there's one more twist. "When I first met Frank he was in newspapers and I was a Bedfordshire county councillor," reveals Lowe. "Now the roles have been reversed."

So is it payback time, then? "I wouldn't say that," says Lowe. "But I can't remember him sparing my blushes back then. We're a hard hitting campaigning newspaper, and we'll just do what we always do. We don't go out of our way to attack people, but if they merit it - they get it."

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About this article

Bedford's Berlusconi

This article appeared on p7 of the MediaGuardian section of the Guardian
on Sunday 3 November 2002.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 05.49 EST on Monday 4 November 2002.
It was last modified at 05.49 EST on Tuesday 5 November 2002.
It was first published at 05.49 EST on Tuesday 5 November 2002.